How the crowding, handling, and waiting that salmon experience before slaughter cause significant welfare harm and what better practices look like.
Pre-slaughter welfare for farmed salmon encompasses the period from beginning of harvest operations through to actual death — a period that may last hours or days in conventional systems. During this time, fish experience the compounding stressors of crowding, handling, removal from water, transport, and sometimes prolonged holding in crowded tanks. Each of these steps elevates stress physiology, and their cumulative effect is substantial suffering before any attempt at killing. Systems that minimise the number of handling steps, reduce the duration between crowding and killing, and implement effective pre-slaughter stunning are demonstrably superior in welfare terms. The commercial justification for better pre-slaughter welfare also exists: chronically stressed fish produce lower-quality flesh.